1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to electronic printers wherein multi-page documents to be printed are received as character code signals to be applied to a raster image processor for rasterization, and more particularly to such printers having means to electronically store the signals for collation printing of a plurality of multi-page document sets.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Computer work stations, work processors, and the like generally produce print jobs as character code signals, such as ASCII code. The print jobs are queued in a print server, and spooled one page at a time to a raster image processor (RIP). The RIP converts the coded signals to a rasterized video data stream for printing pixel (picture element) by pixel. When a plurality of printed sets of a multi-page document are desired, the print server can electronically collate the pages and present them to the RIP in the proper sequence, as often as is needed to produce the desired number of collated sets.
In high speed printers, such systems suffer from the disadvantage that the rasterization process of each page of the document must be repeated for every collated set to be printed. Since rasterization can be a time consuming process, repeated re-rasterization greatly slows the printing process.